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Electrobiology of Root Hairs

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Root Hairs

Abstract

During growth and development of the plant root, root hairs often play a key role in nodulation, and water and ion uptake. Root hairs are not an obligatory cell type on the root surface. However, when present, they have highly active respiration (Connoly and Berlyn 1996), and are known to preferentially express a number of transport proteins, such as the plasma membrane H+ ATPase (Samuels et al. 1992), ammonium and nitrate transporters (Lauter et al. 1996), and a phosphate transporter (Daram et al. 1998). In fact, root hair length increases when phosphorus levels are low (Bates and Lynch 1996). The preferential expression of ion transporters and morphological responses to nutrient conditions both suggest that root hairs have special and unique functions in ion transport. In addition, they are an ideal system for examining ion transport mechanisms in situ because they have anatomical and cytological characteristics that simplify the micromanipulation, impalement, and micro-injection necessary to characterize ion transport. They are readily accessible and microscopic imaging is straightforward because of the lack of interference by surrounding tissue. This even results in an ability to manipulate specific intracellular targets, useful not only in studies of ion transport, but also cellular signal transduction in general.

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  1. Biology Department, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada

    Roger R. Lew

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  1. Department of Biology Division of Natural Sciences, International Christian University, 3-10-2 Osawa, 181-8585, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan

    Robert William Ridge

  2. Department of Plant Sciences, Wageningen University, Arboretumlaan 4, NL-6703 BD, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Anne Mie C. Emons

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Lew, R.R. (2000). Electrobiology of Root Hairs. In: Ridge, R.W., Emons, A.M.C. (eds) Root Hairs. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-68370-4_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-68370-4_8

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